News

We often hear that our ‘Australian’ future may well be made in China. As part of our commitment to remain up-to-date with our advice to clients we recently sought a briefing from experts on one of the burning topics of global investments; China and its impact on the Australian Economy. Here we provide a short overview of the experts’ insights.... Read more

The federal budget has been handed down and the promise of a return to surplus delivered. Here in this issue of On Balance, we highlight some budget changes that are likely to be of particular interest to many of our clients. Spending Cuts Significantly major cuts have been made to defence spending, overseas aid and the 1% reduction of the... Read more

We’ve recently had several property investors come to us with an assumption that their investment properties constructed prior to 1984 will not allow any significant depreciation for the cost of construction. This is not entirely correct and we fear there are too many investment property owners failing to obtain all the benefits of the allowable deductions for their property. Consider... Read more

The current best deal that we can source for our clients is overdraft finance at 6.70% and only one annual fee, if the loan is secured against an owner occupied home. As this is a new loan product, most businesses are still unnecessarily paying upwards of 11% (with a default rate of at least 16%). It is critical for businesses... Read more

As an ethical financial advisor with an interest in growing and protecting the wealth of my clients, I cannot recommend strongly enough that if you have dependents you should obtain appropriate personal insurance such as life insurance. Unfortunately I have seen the consequences to families when someone is underinsured too often. While it is an unpleasant topic here is one... Read more

One area of estate planning that is becoming more and more common is the making or updating of Wills by couples who have been married previously, so called “blended families”. Blended families are amongst the fastest growing family type in Australia, increasing by 50% over the past decade. Unfortunately it is not always as sweet as the “The Brady Bunch”.... Read more

To some people the term “family business” will awaken connotations of poorly managed, nepotistic organisations that lack the corporate professionalism of public companies held accountable to shareholders. In our experience this is an incorrect stereotype of the entities which account for 70% of the total number in Australia with an estimated $4.3 trillion of wealth. Family businesses drive the Australian... Read more

With stock market volatility, investors inevitably ask…“Should I have invested in cash instead?” While we can never predict the future, we can look back at the returns of various types of investments over the last decade to answer this question. In this scenario we compare the performance of 4 asset classes if $10,000 was invested in June 2000 and the... Read more